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Urubichá fire, August 2022 Urubichá

Out · last detection 6 Oct 2022, 05:45 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2022 in Urubichá, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 38 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 40,539 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 52th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 834 with a page). Number 10 in Bolivia in 2022, of 222.

Burnt area
40,539ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
38days
30 Aug 2022 – 6 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
30 Aug
2022
Heat detections
2,410
in a single hotspot: 205 MW
Danger at start
21
High · FWI index
Energy released
12.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

6 Oct 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug6 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

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Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

37°high
54km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 34.7 mm on 7 Oct.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 244 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Urubichá 6,555 inhabitants where it started
    40,835 ha
    2.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
26 Aug 35.1 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
27 Aug 34.7 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
28 Aug 31.5 °C 34 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Aug 27.3 °C 25 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Aug 30.1 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
31 Aug 34.3 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
1 Sept 34.2 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Sept 32.5 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
3 Sept 30.6 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Sept 31.1 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
5 Sept 32.6 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Sept 34.0 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Sept 34.7 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Sept 34.4 °C 34 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Sept 34.9 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.5 mm High 30
10 Sept 31.0 °C 28 % 37 km/h 2.2 mm Moderate 19
11 Sept 33.8 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Sept 33.4 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
13 Sept 32.5 °C 46 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
14 Sept 27.2 °C 37 % 44 km/h 3.2 mm Low 10
15 Sept 26.6 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
16 Sept 32.6 °C 27 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Sept 35.3 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Sept 37.1 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Sept 36.8 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.3 mm High 34
20 Sept 36.9 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.6 mm High 30
21 Sept 37.1 °C 32 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Sept 29.4 °C 44 % 49 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
23 Sept 29.7 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Sept 34.6 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Sept 36.0 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
26 Sept 36.9 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Sept 36.4 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
28 Sept 31.4 °C 51 % 37 km/h 6.8 mm Low 6
29 Sept 22.3 °C 67 % 42 km/h 3.5 mm Very low 4
30 Sept 29.2 °C 48 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
1 Oct 33.9 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
2 Oct 35.2 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
3 Oct 35.1 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
4 Oct 34.1 °C 45 % 44 km/h 2.6 mm Low 9
5 Oct 34.7 °C 42 % 44 km/h 3.8 mm Low 9
6 Oct 32.4 °C 50 % 50 km/h 1.9 mm Low 9
7 Oct after 24.2 °C 82 % 28 km/h 34.7 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 23 Aug 2022
After · 13 Oct 2022

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 7 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 263 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 169: 11 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak263 µg/m³
Days over the guideline42 days
PM10375 µg/m³
Optical depth2.73
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Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 2,410Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Bolivia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Urubichá fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 August 2022 and 6 October 2022: 38 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 40,539 hectares (405.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Urubichá (40,835 ha, 2.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bolivia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 119 · 110

Satellite cross-check

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 119 · 110.

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Public Domain). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.